Some account of a boy born blind and deaf : collected from authentic sources of information; with a few remarks and comments / By Dugald Stewart ... From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
- Dugald Stewart
- Date:
- [1815]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Some account of a boy born blind and deaf : collected from authentic sources of information; with a few remarks and comments / By Dugald Stewart ... From the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Source: Wellcome Collection.
19/92 page 11
![ances being made, 1st, for the visual sensations which were fa- miliar to the patient from his infancy, and, 27///, for the in- timate and accurate acquaintance which he had acquired of things externa], by a comparison of the perceptions of smell and of touch, the result appears, on the whole, as favourable as could reasonably have been expected, to the Berkeleian theory of vision : Nor am I able to observe a single circum- stance of any importance, which is not perfectly reconcilable with the general tenor of Cheselden’s narrative*. B 2 The * I have said, the 44 general tenor of Cheselden’s narrative,”—for there are some expressions ascribed by him to his patient, which must, in my opinion, be understood with a comiderable degree of latitude. And, indeed, if we reflect for a moment on the astonishment and agitation likely to be produced by the sudden acquisition of a new sense, we cannot fail to be satisfied, that the autho* rity of the narrative rests much more on the conviction which the whole circum- stances of the case had left on Cheselden’s own mind, than on the verbal an- swers (intelligent and satisfactory as most of these are), which his patient gave to the queries of his attendants. It was for this reason, among others, that I before hinted at the advantages which he would have enjoyed, in observing and describing theyhets before him, if his patient had been deaf as well as blind, like the subject of this memoir. Of one expression employed by Ciieseld^n’s young man, I think it proper to take some notice here, on account of the stress which Mr Ware seems disposed to lay upon it, as at variance with the language used by his patient Master W. 44 When the young gentleman first saw, (says Cheselden), he was so far from making any judgment about distances, that he thought all objects whatever touched his eyes, (as he expressed it , as what he felt did his skin.” It seems to me inconceivable, that Cheselden could have meant this last phrase to be inter- preted literally; for the thing which it implies is altogether impossible. The most obvious meaning which the words convey is, that the object seemed to be contiguous to, or in contact with, the cornea; whereas the truth is, that the office of the cornea is merely to transmit the rays to the retina, which it does without itself receiving any sensible impression of which we are conscious. Mr Smith,.. too has objected to this mode of speaking, though on grounds somewhat different. 44 When the young gentleman said, (I quote Mr Smith’s words), that the objects whir hr.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22009577_0019.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
